


calling Away, come away

by Jothowrote



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Except for Jon, Folktales and fantasy, Gen, M/M, background/vague Melanie/Sasha, everyone is a magical creature of some kind, hinted Martin/Tim, tmabigbang18, who is a non-magical idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 17:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16141745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jothowrote/pseuds/Jothowrote
Summary: Jon, desperate for knowledge, is tempted away by the sidhe. It's up to his assistants to get him back.AU set in the modern world where fae and sirens and selkies and witches and seers live among us. For the TMA Big Bang 2018.Art by my wonderful treater (although a slight spoiler): http://magictavern.tumblr.com/post/178601454598/my-second-treat-for-the-tma-big-bang-run-by





	calling Away, come away

**Author's Note:**

> So this AU for the Big Bang got way out of hand and deviated significantly from my original idea. It's very AU. 
> 
> I hope this provides the same kind of break from the current trauma of current canon as it did for me. Tim, my probably-dead darling dearest, I love you.
> 
> Excellent, beautiful art by my wonderful treater can be found here - it is for the coda, however, so I advise to save it for afterwards: http://magictavern.tumblr.com/post/178601454598/my-second-treat-for-the-tma-big-bang-run-by
> 
> Please let me know if there are any warnings I need to add for this - I don't think there are, but I've been reading it so long I've gone content-blind.

Michael had beckoned him through a golden doorway, and Jon had walked through.

He opened his eyes, and he was alone in a forest.

Jon walked with quiet feet on a soft mulch floor. The forest was dark and cool, the air thick with damp moss and petrichor. Golden sunlight filtered through the tree canopy, dappling the ground and catching on the dancing motes in the air. 

Jon walked deeper in, barely noticing as the forest grew thicker and darker as he went. The sunlight faded and fewer bright columns managing to pierce their way through the leaves above. The smell of damp earth rose thicker and stronger.

Jon walked with steady-minded, stubborn purpose. Even if he had wanted to stop, he didn’t think he could – his legs would carry him on into the heart of the forest regardless.

Jon walked for an indeterminable amount of time. The sun stayed slanted through the trees at the same angle, as though held still in the sky, giving no indication of time passing. Perhaps time had stopped. Perhaps there never was time. Perhaps all there ever was and had been was Jon, walking through a forest, in the dappled light. 

Jon walked further. The trees stretched higher into the sky, the roots growing to be as big as a man and then taller still. 

Jon kept walking, single-minded, until eventually the trees gave way to a clearing. A deep, clear pool lay in the centre, and a nearby stream burbled merrily into it. Jon looked down into the clear water but, instead of a sandy bed, saw only darkness. 

Jon looked up from the darkness, and there was an old man standing on the other side of the pool. He wasn’t surprised – the man had always been there. Jon just hadn’t looked properly.

‘You’ve strayed far off the path,’ the old man said, as he put a piece of bark into his mouth and began to chew. The movement of his cheeks made the wrinkled skin bunch up beneath the eyepatch covering his right eye. His left eye was a bright, piercing blue.

Jon ignored him. The old man shrugged and slumped down against a tree stump.

Jon knelt down by the side of the pool and stared into it.

**

Jon didn’t know why he’d decided to do it that particular week, only that he woke up one morning and thought it was time. 

He’d gone into work early as usual on the Monday, arriving before all his assistants. Elias was already there, of course – Jon wondered whether the man ever actually left. Jon didn’t bother to let Elias know he’d arrived. He would already know.

Jon worked through various high priority case files solidly until he hit the normal mid-morning slump. Just as he was deciding whether to get up and go to the kitchen and make a cup of tea, there was a gentle cough from his open door.

‘Morning,’ Martin said, pushing awkwardly through the door with his hands full of steaming mugs. ‘Thought you might want some tea.’

‘Thanks, Martin,’ Jon said, taking his mug and breathing in deeply. The smell of tea immediately soothed his fraying nerves. Together with the tannin, he could smell Martin’s own habitual scent – part earthly smells, part specific aura that his grandmother had taught him to sense. His grandmother had always smelt of moss, peat, and petrichor. Martin, in comparison, had a much lighter smell – fresh sea air and cold salt water, mixed with a faint smell of woodsmoke. As usual, despite the cold weather, he was in a faded t-shirt and jacketless. Jon was sure that Martin would wear shorts to work if he thought he could get away with it.

Jon took a sip of tea; his whole body untensed in relief.

‘Really – thank you. I owe you one,’ Jon said, aware that he very rarely thanked Martin for the little kindnesses he gave out every day. Multiple times Jon had looked up to find a cup of tea, coffee, or a small pile of biscuits put on his desk, the culprit long gone. ‘I owe you more than one.’

Martin, under Jon’s effusive thanks, pinked slightly.

‘You can pay me back by coming out for drinks some time,’ he said, looking a little astonished at his own bravery. 'You know - with me and the others. Melanie and Basira and Tim, and Sasha sometimes. All of us, I mean. Not just me,' he stammered.

‘I will,’ Jon said. ‘I promise.’

It might be nice, he thought. Something to look forward to.

The next day, as he slipped off his grandmother’s ring, he thought belatedly of his promise.

But he was already gone.

**

Thursday mornings always felt the busiest. Being close to the end of the week meant that both the general public and the institute employees were tired and had fraying tempers. Martin looked down at the file in front of him and tried to concentrate on the spidery scrawl someone - Jon, most likely - had scratched down the side.

‘Excuse me – are you even listening to me?’

Martin jolted in his seat and looked up to see the woman glaring at him across his desk.

‘Of course,’ he lied, blinking hurriedly and shuffling his papers around in an attempt to look officious. ‘Look, I’m really sorry, Miss – uh –‘

‘Ms Doyle,’ the woman sniffed.

‘ _Ms_ Doyle, but I’m afraid the law does state that using your powers against a human without their consent is illegal. They might be willing to let you off, since this is a first offence, but you really do need to be more careful.’

Ms Doyle sniffed haughtily, her delicate, manicured fingernails reaching up to tangle in her pearls. Sharp, pointed teeth peeked out from between her bright red lips.

‘You humans are all the same,’ she said, stiffly. ‘You’re jealous of us. Scared and jealous, like children. I can see you won’t be of any help to me.’

Her chair scraped loudly as she stood, and Martin winced at the nails-on-chalkboard shriek of sound. Ms Doyle flounced away, scarves flapping.

Martin sighed and put away her file.

‘You shouldn’t let them push you around like that, especially for thinking you're a human,’ Tim said from right behind him. Martin practically leapt out of his chair.

‘Christ, Tim, how long have you been there?’

‘Not long,’ he shrugged. ‘I was waiting for that termagant to leave. The boss wants to talk to you. He seemed pretty on edge, actually.’

‘Jon?’ Martin asked vaguely, as he tried to organise his messy desk. Case files were strewn about haphazardly in a fashion that undoubtedly broke all data protection acts, which he’d been told off for before.

‘Hmm? No, not Jon – I meant his nibs up in the top office. He’s all in a tizzy today.’

‘Oh.’ Martin frowned. ‘Have you seen Jon today?’

'No,' Tim said, turning away, apparently already bored with the conversation. 'Thankfully.'

Elias’s door was ajar when Martin got there, and through the crack Martin could see that he was in the middle of a reading. Martin hovered awkwardly outside, not wanting to disturb.

‘Come in, Martin,’ Elias called. ‘I know you’re there.’

‘Didn’t want to bother,’ Martin said as he slid inside, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.

‘I called you up here,’ Elias said tiredly. He laid out the last card and heaved a great sigh. Before him lay Death, the Hanged Man, and the Devil. Martin had never understood tarot cards or their meanings, but he could tell from Elias’ face that this wasn’t a positive reading.

‘Why did you want to see me?’ he asked tentatively.

Elias, uncharacteristically, rubbed his hands over his face before clearing the cards away.

‘When was the last time you saw Jon?’ 

Martin was thrown briefly by the question.

‘I don’t know… two days ago?’ He shrugged. ‘He stays in his office generally, you know, so we don’t see him often down on the public levels.’

‘How did he seem, then?’ Elias leant forward on his desk, eyes sharp. Martin frowned.

‘Fine. Normal,’ he said. He cast his mind back to Tuesday. He’d brought Jon a cup of tea before packing up for the day. Jon had seemed preoccupied with his work – which in itself was hardly unusual – and had thanked him distractedly for the tea, and Martin had left him to it.

‘Nothing unusual? At all?’

No? Why?’ Apprehension was settling like a stone in Martin’s stomach

Elias reached under his desk and pulled something out, placing it on his desk with a gentle clink. When he took his hand away, it revealed a small cold-iron ring. 

‘Jon’s ring,’ Martin breathed.

‘He hasn’t come in to the Institute for the past two days. And this was on the floor in his office.’

Martin stared at the ring. He’d never seen Jon without it. He’d never asked about it either. He had watched that ring when he’d watched Jon’s hands. He liked Jon’s hands – they were large with slender finders, strong and capable and surprisingly gentle.

He wasn’t going to tell Elias _that_ particular tidbit, although no doubt Elias already knew about his crush.

‘Why would he leave his ring behind?’ Martin asked. 

Elias raised an eyebrow.

‘There’s only one reason for someone to wear nondecorative cold iron in our line of business – especially someone who’s been marked.’

Martin did know - he’d worked at the centre long enough to know – but it still seemed to get stuck in his head, as though the thought wouldn’t quite get through.

‘Jon was marked?’

‘Since childhood, I believe.’

‘And you knew?’

Elias shrugged. ‘’It’s not hard for someone like me to see the signature of the fae – especially when it is so strong as it was on Jon.’

‘But – but they couldn’t have taken the ring off him.’ Martin said. ‘They can’t touch cold iron. They don’t even go _near_ it. He would have had to have taken it off himself.’

‘Exactly.’ Elias looked grave. ‘I’m afraid that Jon has made... a bad choice.’

Martin stared into Elias’ impassive face and got angry.

‘You knew he was marked and you never said anything!’ 

‘He knew already, and there was no reason for me to tell you – until now. And besides,’ he said, one eyebrow practically lost into his hairline, ‘you usually complain that I use my knowledge too liberally.’

‘Tim does, you mean,’ Martin said, but he had to admit that Elias had a point. Elias’ second sight and uncanny ability of knowing everyone’s secrets was a HR nightmare, and Tim very rarely let them forget it. Martin often didn’t bother complaining about it. He had nothing to hide except what Sasha called his ‘embarrassing crush’, and apparently everyone already knew about that.

Everyone except Jon, of course.

‘So you think they’ve taken him?’ Martin asked. ‘The sidhe? Why are you telling me? What can _I_ do?’

‘He’s gotten himself into this mess and he won’t be able to get himself out,’ Elias said tiredly. He picked up the iron ring – Jon’s ring – and, holding it delicately between his thumb and forefinger, offered it to Martin.

‘Get him back,’ Elias said. ‘You and the others.’

 _Why us_ , Martin thought, even as he reached forward and took the ring from Elias’ hands. The ring itself was cold. Jon was with the sidhe, in the Land of Youth. No one tempted there ever made it back unchanged.

‘It’s too late,’ Martin said. ‘It’s been too long.’

‘No.’ Elias’ face, if anything, looked even more impassive. ‘The cards say that there is still time.’

‘How much?’

‘Barely enough.’

‘Ok,’ Martin said, mainly to himself. ‘Ok.’ 

He didn’t look back at Elias as he hurried out of his office, leaving the door open behind him. Jon’s ring slipped perfectly onto his index finger and began to warm to his body heat.

**

Basira woke up from the strange fog that took over her mind when she gave the sidhe side of her free reign, and realised that she was parked around the corner from the Magnus Institute. 

`You back with me?' Daisy asked from the passenger seat, half-eaten sandwich in her hand, apparently mid-way through lunch.

'Yeah - we're nearly there.'

Daisy nodded, packed up her food, and got out the car. Basira took a deep, centering breath, and followed.

Being a harbinger of death and doom had always worked surprisingly well in conjunction with her job as a police officer. She was always the first to know of any murder cases, and was always first on the scene - sometimes even before the victim and the murderer were. Those were the good cases - the ones she could prevent.

More often, she was just too late.

As her feet took her closer and closer to the Institute the familiar panic reared up. She often ended up at the Institute when she leant on her sidhe side - they dealt with many of the supernatural domestic cases and had files on almost all magical beings in the city, and most of them had been there at one point in their lives. But every time she found herself there, anticipation tingling in her throat as a wail built up, she worried that this time she would be wailing for someone she knew.

Daisy said nothing as they walked. She had no love for the Institute or its employees, and knew that Basira wouldn't want to hear false platitudes. Basira didn't mind the silence. 

Martin was in the foyer when Basira pushed through the double doors, and his face went pale when he saw them.

'Oh god,' he said. 'Are we already too late?'

'What's happened?' she asked.

'Jon's... gone,' he said, holding up his hand to show Jon's cold-iron ring.

Basira had never liked that ring. Having a fifth of her blood from the sidhe meant that cold iron wasn't deadly for her, but stung a lot to the touch and gave her a headache if she spent too much time around it. Jon had never been very apologetic about it, the bastard.

'Gone?' Daisy asked.

'He's not dead,' Basira said, concentrating on the usual gentle tug in her sternum that brought her to places of future death. 'I'm only an omen, remember.'

'How long do we have?'

'What do you mean, gone?' Daisy asked, irritably.

'Gone with the sidhe,' Basira said, shooting Martin a look. He nodded.

'And he went of his own free will?' Daisy said.

'Yes, but-'

'Then it's nothing to do with us. Come on, Basira.' 

'Daisy, wait,' Basira said, but Daisy had already pushed back out of the double doors and into the sunlight.

'There's nothing you can do to help?' Martin asked, looking desperate. Basira shrugged.

'Daisy's right. If he went of his own accord, it's nothing to do with us.'

'And if he never comes back?'

'I am sorry about this,' Basira said. 'I like Jon - but it's out of our hands.'

'We're going after him,' Martin said, stubbornly. 'We're going to get him back.'

'He might make it back by himself. He's clever.'

'I'm not willing to take that chance.'

`Well then - good luck,' said Basira. 'You'll need it.'

She turned to go, but Martin caught her arm - thankfully with the hand not currently wearing a cold-iron ring. Basira looked down at his hand and raised her eyebrows. He let go a little sheepishly.

'Look - you're part sidhe, right? Where's the nearest gate to Tir Na N'Og?'

`You really want to do this?' 

'Yes.'

Basira sighed. She'd never been Martin's biggest fan - not only had their first meeting been a little tense after Tim had mistakenly believed her and Jon to be together and had passed on the false information to Martin, but there was something about him that unsettled the sidhe part of her. There was something... missing. Like he was unfinished. But she did like Jon, and she knew that Martin was genuine in his desire to get Jon home safe. 

'There's a mound just outside the M25. In Windsor Great Park. I’ll send you a map.'

`Thanks,' Martin said. 

'Be careful,' she said, but he had already turned away.

Basira watched his retreating back. She thought about Jon, who had always _listened_ to her, even if he hadn’t always been nice.

She thought of Martin and the others, falling easily prey to her full-blooded relatives.

Basira heaved a great sigh.

‘Martin!’ 

He spun around almost instantly.

‘Yes?’ he said, face bright and hopeful.

Basira rubbed her temples, but she knew that deep down she had already made up her mind.

‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, ‘but only as far as the gate. I’ll get you in. You’ll have to do the rest.’

‘Thank you!’ Martin squeaked, fists clenched in excitement. ‘We’re ready to go now – is that ok?’

‘I guess it has to be,’ she said, but he was already rushing off again, this time with his head up and eyes bright.

**

Melanie and Sasha were both relatively easy to convince. 

Tim was not.

'Come on, Tim,' Martin wheedled. 'He'd do it for you.'

Tim snorted.

`He kind of did, right?' Melanie said. `I know it was before my time, but he was there with you when the institute was attacked.'

'Exactly!' Martin chimed in. 'Even after I... uh, abandoned you guys.'

'So our workplace is unusually hazardous - I don't think that means I should try and make my life outside of work just as dangerous. And besides, the pixies had already got him on the leg; he couldn't have left me anyway.' 

But Martin could see that Tim was softening.

'He's not good at telling us,' Martin said, 'but he does like us and want to keep us safe. We should do the same for him.'

'You only think that because you fancy him,' Tim said, ignoring Martin's fire-engine-red face. 

Tim looked at all their faces in turn.

'Tim, we're all going,' Sasha said, finally. 'Come with us for our sake, if not for Jon's.'

'Argh, fine,' Tim said, throwing his hands up in the air.

'Great! Right, we don't have much time,' Martin said, eager to jump straight into business. 'Basira told me where the nearest doorway to Tir Na N'Og is, so we should head there asap.'

'Wait, aren't we doing anything to prepare?' Tim asked.

'Not like we can take anything with us,' Melanie shrugged. 'You know the stories - you can't take anything with you there. You need to go as purely yourself.'

'Whatever that means,' Sasha added.

'Not even magical weapons?'

'Especially not them,' Martin said, despondently. 'I checked.'

'So, just us.' Tim looked around at their motley foursome. 'Great. Perfect. This definitely isn't a suicide mission.'

'You don't have to come,' Martin snapped.

'Yeah, I do.' Tim sighed so hard it ruffled his fringe. 'I do, because you'll never forgive me otherwise. But I'm not going to be happy about it.'

He proceeded to not be happy about it for the entire drive to Windsor, sitting in the back of Melanie's car with his arms crossed and a face like thunder. Martin, also sat in the back, wondered whether it was too late to kick Tim out of their rescue party.

True to her word, Basira showed them the way, and so they had a police escort to the park. Basira’s partner Daisy apparently came with the car, because she glared at them from the passenger window as Basira drove past. Daisy scared Martin quite a bit – there was something about her that made his lizard brain scream predator. He nervously avoided her gimlet stare and focussed on Basira.

An hour or so later and they pulled up beside the police car in the public car park. Daisy and Basira were leaning against the side and conferring in low voices, but broke apart when Sasha slammed the passenger door of Melanie’s car hard enough to make Melanie jump.

‘Come on, then,’ Basira said, looking unhappy. 

‘You sure about this?’ Daisy asked, low, just before Basira started to move away.

Martin saw Basira nod, but turned away before Daisy caught him eavesdropping.

‘So there’s a mound around here?’ Melanie asked, interested, as Basira walked them through Blacknest Gate, past the church of Herne, god of the Wild Hunt, and followed the road along to the devil’s punchbowl. 

‘Has been for centuries, or so I’m told,’ Basira said. ‘The Fae like being near the Queen’s favourite house. Makes them feel important.’

The devil’s punchbowl, to Martin’s great surprise, was beautiful.

‘This isn’t what I was expecting,’ Melanie said, hands on her hips, as she surveyed the sweeping green valley bedecked on all sides by bright, vibrant rhododendrons.

‘You know the fae,’ Tim said, with a disapproving sniff, ‘they love looking good.’

Martin thought the disdain was a bit rich from someone who spent over half an hour on their hair in the morning. 

‘There,’ Basira said, pointing at the mound in the middle-distance, standing out amongst two slopes bedecked with fat colourful flowers in a range of colours. They all trooped after her, walking through air thick with pollen and fragrance. A fat bumble bee buzzed past, rested for a second on Martin’s head, and carried on.

‘Yeah, this is it,’ Melanie said. ‘It feels like a gateway. Transitory. Definitely a liminal space.’ She sniffed the air. ‘Smells like ozone.’

‘It smells like a perfume factory,’ Tim huffed. ‘It’s bringing out my hayfever.’ As if to prove a point, he followed that up with a loud sneeze. Basira rolled her eyes.

There was a strange rock on the side of the mound that looked, if Martin squinted and turned his head, almost like a door. The closer they got to it, the more door-like it became, until they were metres away and it looked like it couldn’t be anything other than a door.

Sasha walked right up to it and stared it down.

‘I guess we just… open it?’ Martin guessed.

The door swung open silently at the touch of Basira’s hand on the handle, to reveal sunlit cliffs and wheeling gulls.

‘Now that’s what I’m talking about,’ Tim said, breathing in deeply. ‘Sea air.’

The doorway itself was covered by a strange gold membrane, almost transparent, that moved and warped as they watched.

‘Who wants to go first?’ Melanie asked, with a strange little laugh.

They all looked at Basira – she shrugged and held out a hand as if to say 'after you'.

Tim strode forward without another word, passing through the transparent golden air without trouble. It warped and billowed from the disturbance but stayed across the doorway, shining like gossamer thread. Sasha looked back at Martin, shrugged, and followed. Melanie hurried on afterwards. Both of them passed through as easily as Tim, leaving nothing but eddying currents in that golden membrane.

Martin paused right in front of the doorway, took a deep breath, and stepped forward.

An almighty force flung him away from the door and clear across the ground, and he rolled to a stop on damp grass. It felt as though all the breath had been knocked from his body. He wheezed and coughed with an aching chest.

He realised through the fog of confusion and pain that someone was calling his name.

‘Martin!’ Sasha was saying, standing above him with a worried frown. ‘Are you ok?’

His back hurt and he still couldn’t breathe deeply, but he nodded anyway, embarrassed.

‘You’re missing something,’ Melanie said, squinting at him. ‘Unless you’ve got contraband on you…’

‘I don’t have anything on me,’ Martin said, coughing a little.

‘No, she’s right,’ Basira said. ‘It rejected you because you aren’t… fully you.’

‘Where’s your skin?’ Tim asked, also hovering above him. 

‘My what?’

‘You know – your sealskin.’ Tim pulled his mermaid’s cap out of his pocket and waved it around. ‘That counts as part of you, right? Your selkie part, anyway.’

‘I don’t have one,’ Martin said, shaking his head. ‘I’m not - wait – a selkie?’

‘I mean, yeah,’ Tim said, shrugging. ‘That’s what you are, right?’

‘Um.’

‘You mean, you didn’t know?’ Melanie’s eyes were wide. 

‘Uh… no?’ Martin had never thought himself anything except completely human - right up until that moment. ‘I mean, maybe a little selkie blood from my dad’s side – my family were fishermen, so at some point one or two might have… but me?’

‘Trust me,’ Tim said, waving his cap in the air, ‘I recognise selkie when I see it. Not to mention you smell like salt and fish.’

‘You even look like a selkie,’ Sasha pointed out, as Melanie nodded.

Martin blushed a little, embarrassed. He’d always been jealous of Tim and his siren blood – Tim was tall and willowy, possessed of a bell-like voice and a dancer’s grace, with chiselled cheekbones, golden hair, and eyes like the sea in storm. Martin had always been what could be generously described as stocky, with dark eyes and darker hair, an average mousy voice and usual human clumsiness when compared to otherworldly beings like Tim.

‘I didn’t know,’ Martin said. Then, ‘I can’t ask my dad. He’s dead.’

‘Your mum?’ Sasha hazarded.

‘In a care home. She had early-onset Alzheimer’s for as long as I could remember, but recently it’s been getting much worse,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how much she’ll know – my dad might not have even told her what he was.’

‘You’re sure it was your dad?’ Melanie asked.

‘Magical people don’t get Alzheimer’s,’ Martin said, simply.

'Yeah... but selkie blood's strongest when passed down through the maternal line,' Tim said. 'It's more common, anyway. It might still be your mum.'

‘Then we go to ask your mum,’ Sasha said, ‘and quickly. And if that doesn’t work…’

Martin knew what she was too nice to say. They would have to go and rescue Jon without him.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, trying to put on a brave face. ‘The home’s not far from here.’

**

The waters of the pool flickered with images if he looked into it long enough. 

‘What do they show?’ he asked the old man.

The old man shrugged and spat out the now thoroughly chewed bark.

‘Depends on what you asked for,’ he said, in his gravelly tones.

Jon turned back to the pool, unsatisfied. He wasn’t entirely sure what he had asked for, or when he had asked for it. He just remembered having a desperate yearning for knowledge, like a starving man reaching for a feast.

‘Think of something specifically,’ the old man offered, reaching up to scratch under his eyepatch. 

Jon rocked back on his heels and wondered what to think about. His mind drifted to the institute. He wondered vaguely whether they had noticed he was missing by now. He thought of Martin, bringing morning tea to an empty office, to a lack of Jon. 

In the pool, the images flickered again.

It was a series of strange, apparently unconnected scenes that Jon did not entirely understand. There was Martin kneeling by the wheelchair of an older woman, her face paper-white and frail. His other assistants stood behind him, looking horrified and pitying and sad. Jon’s gaze caught on their faces, but the image had already morphed into…

There was a man with Martin’s jaw and thick, wavy hair, standing in a garden and watching a small fire burn, the flames casting long shadows on his triumphant face. It didn’t look like a particularly good wood fire – Jon remembered the ones he had built with his grandmother with dry kindling and silver birch bark, the kind that burnt hot and orange and clean. This fire was smoky and weak, burning something wet, or oily. The flames writhed and twisted, and the image contorted into…

There was a woman, the paper-thin old woman from before, only younger and healthier. She was hiding something in a box, casting panicked glances over her shoulder, as though terrified of being caught. Her eyes were sunken in and her face was pallid, as though she was already started on the journey which would lead her to looking thin and frail and old before her time. The image faded, slowly, starting from the edges, until the last things left were her dark, hollow eyes…

The pool cleared, and Jon leant back, gasping, as though he had sprinted a hundred metres.

**

‘Curious child,’ his grandmother had called him, ‘too curious for your own good. Just like your mother.’

He never liked hearing about his parents.

His grandmother would take him out into the forest for foraging, as she hunted for herbs and wildflowers she could not grow in her garden, or which needed to be picked wild, untouched by human hands. She would teach him what herbs helped with an aching back, with open wounds, with broken hearts. Jon would lap it up, but once the lesson was done and the job of picking became repetitive and laborious, his attentions would wander.

‘Curious children get their noses bitten off,’ his grandmother would say, pinching at his nose with her dirty fingernails. He would flinch away – he was always slightly afraid of his grandmother. She was loud, and brash, and smelt of peat and mulched leaves. She was a hedgewitch and followed the old ways, despairing of Jon and his wandering mind. Together they would walk through the forest nearby, collecting the tools for her trade, but Jon would grow bored and stop picking nettles to listen to the sound of a robin marking its territory, or follow a fox to its den to see its wriggling kits, or chase squirrels up trees. At home, he read voraciously to keep his mind full and busy, but in the forest he had to rely on the world around him to tell him stories.

A few times he would hear music and laughter on the breeze, bells chiming on the wind with the braying of horses and the howling of dogs. Before he would follow the sound to its source, his grandmother would grasp his arm so tightly that her long nails dug painfully into the soft flesh.

‘It’s not calling you, lad,’ she would say. ‘Not today.’

He would overhear her, later, talking to her hedgewitch friends in the living room with the smoky fire, while he lurked on the stairs and eavesdropped.

‘He’s too curious,’ she said, as the others tutted. ‘Just like his parents. Just like his mother. Weak-minded, easily led – just a hint of the sidhe on the breeze and he catches the scent like a bloodhound.’

‘Sounds like more trouble than he’s worth,’ sniffed a witch, the one with a bird familiar hovering large and black on her shoulder.

‘He’s a good lad,’ his grandmother said. ‘He’s clever. I’ll keep him too busy to run away with the lords and ladies, don’t you mind.’

**

The nursing home was quiet and smelt like old person froust and disinfectant, as always. The receptionist smiled and nodded at Martin, and was too polite to do more than flick inquisitive eyes over Tim, Melanie, and Sasha as they trailed behind him.

‘She’s out in the garden today,’ she said. ‘I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you again so soon!’

‘Thanks, Beth,’ Martin said, remembering to smile back before chivvying the others through the main hall and out the French windows on the other side.

Hs mother’s favourite place in the garden had always been by what the residents and nurses affectionately called ‘the pond’, but that was in size more reminiscent of a lake. Martin had never given a thought as to why.

He was starting to realise that he had lived his life with blinkers on.

She looked happy enough to see him, though surprised at his entourage.

‘Hello, love,’ she said, offering her pale cheek for him to kiss. He did so. She smelt of powder and lavender, as usual.

‘Mum,’ he said, squatting down next to her chair and taking her frail hand. He could feel the others hovering awkwardly behind him, trying not to get too close. ‘I need to ask you something important.’

‘Did you have a nice day at school, love?’ she asked, beaming, looking past him to the others. ‘You’ve brought friends round! I never get to meet your friends, dear.’

‘Yes, mum – but I need to ask you something.’

‘What is it?’ She looked up at him with vacant face and a distant smile. 

In his childhood memories her eyes were a dark brown. Now they were pale and watery. Everything about her looked faded, as though she were slowly disappearing from the world. Martin's throat closed up, and for a moment it was all he could do not to cry.

His mother reached up a pale hand with paper-white skin, and gently caressed his cheek.

'Such a lovely boy,' she crooned.

'Mum,' he said, forcing the words out. 'Mum, are... are you a selkie?'

She frowned, her hand dropping from his face.

'Who told you?' she snapped. 'How do you know?'

'What _are_ we?' he asked. 'Please, mum, what happened? Why did you never go back to the sea?'

She said nothing, but looked away, across the pond, where some swans were taking flight

'Mrs Blackwood?' Tim asked, walking slowly forward. 'What happened to your skin?'

'Gone,' she sighed, so quietly that Martin leant closer to hear. 'Gone. But he mustn't know - I've hidden it. He mustn't know.'

'Who, mum? Who mustn't know?'

'The flames were blue,' she whispered, her eyes wide. Her chair creaked as though under strain - Martin looked down to see her hands grasping the arms so tight that her knuckles were white.

'Oh god,' Tim said, face gone pale. 'Oh god. Someone burnt her skin.' He turned away, retching.

'Who, mum?' Martin pressed, leaning closer. There was a sinking feeling in his gut, heavy as lead and twice as poisonous. Her lips moved, but no sound came. 

'He didn't want me to leave,' she said, quietly, her hands moving to her belly. 'Not now there's going to be a baby. He didn't want me to leave. He burnt it, made me watch.'

Martin could hear Tim being sick behind him and felt like doing so himself. Here he’d been thinking that his dad had been the selkie, thinking that his dad must have hated dying so far from his home. Now all he could think was that the bastard had deserved a worse death than from the cancer that had got him.

'The baby,' his mother said, suddenly, reaching forward to grasp Martin's shirt. Her eyes were vacant again, unknowing, as she pleaded with him. 'My baby's skin - I hid it, so he couldn't burn it too. I hid it. He mustn't know.'

'I won't tell,' he said, gently uncurling her hands from his top and wrapping his own hands around them. 'I promise,' he said.

Later, at a coffee shop down the road, away from the musty air of the care home, they sat in silence with their drinks. Martin stirred his latte listlessly.

'It makes sense,' Tim said, still looking a bit green. 'I've never heard of a skin being destroyed before. Her deteriorating mental state must be linked to that.'

'She's never been completely well,' Martin said, staring down at his latte foam. 'She used to be... better.'

'She saved yours,' Melanie said, trying for hopeful. 'She saved you, even after what happened to her.'

'Yeah,' he said. He had kissed her dry forehead as he had left - she had smiled vaguely but hadn't remembered who he was.

'And now we know she must have hidden it somewhere in the house, right?' Melanie said. 'I can't imagine she would have been able to sneak it out without your dad noticing.'

‘Yeah,’ he said, again. His world had turned upside-down, and he felt lost. Everything he had known – had thought he had known – was wrong, tipped on its head. He reached for his latte in a daze.

As he wrapped his hand around the warm drink, Jon’s ring clinked against the glass handle. The sound snapped him out of his malaise, and as he stared at the ring he remembered just how tight their schedule was.

‘Yeah,’ he said again, taking a sip of his drink and ignoring the others’ wide, worried eyes. ‘It’ll be in the house somewhere. Probably in the attic? Dad never went up there.’

‘Then that’s our next stop,’ Melanie said decisively. She downed her espresso in one.

**

Jon looked up from the darkness, and there was a table beside him. He wasn’t surprised – it had always been there. Jon just hadn’t looked properly.

‘You’ve strayed far off the path,’ the old man said, thoughtfully, as he chewed his bark. 'They're tempting you.'

The table was dripping in ripe, fragrant fruit, the smell thick and intoxicating. Without realising he had picked up one round strawberry and brought it up to his mouth. It smelt like the hot summer sun and the dry dust it had grown in.

Jon's mouth watered.

His grandmother's voice, clear as a bell, rang in his ears like a klaxon.

'Don't eat anything the fey folk offer. They'll have you forever if you do.'

The strawberry fell to the grassy floor as he jumped back, heart thrumming high and fast. He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid as to almost eat the food - food offered by the sidhe.

The old man began to laugh, deep and low.

'I told you they're tempting you,' he said. 'Good thing you're smarter than you look.'

Jon decided not to take offence. He put some distance between himself and the table of fruit and settled down to look into the pool again.

'The longer you stay here, the harder it will be to leave,' the old man continued.

'Three days and three nights,' Jon said. 'Three days and three nights.' He kept chanting it, like a safety blanket, as he peered back into the pool.

'And you don't wish to venture further in? There is much more than just this.'

Jon ignored the man. He knew what he'd come for. He knew what he wanted to know. He just needed to remember that.

'Three days and three nights,' he said again. It had been a day and a night, and he was halfway through the second day.

'They'll have tempted you by then,' the old man said, rolling his eyes under thick, bushy eyebrows. 'They always do.'

Jon didn't feel particularly stoked about his chances either - he'd already almost failed at the first hurdle.

He looked back into the pool, focused, and let himself see.

**

His grandmother did her best with him. They loved one another, in the way that family do when nothing connects them but blood. While he lived in her cottage, he took up the precious place an apprentice would have, and so she diligently set about trying to bring him up in the hedgewitch way. Jon would trail after her as she went about her daily duties – visiting the sick and elderly, the pregnant women and the newborns, foraging for supplies in the forest, tending her wild herb garden. She taught him how to mix medicines and tinctures, potions and spells. Love potions for the girls who came knocking at his grandmother’s door, herbal tea for those same girls a few weeks later to prevent any nasty surprises in nine months’ time.

Jon started off paying intense attention to everything his grandmother taught him and soaked up the new information like a sponge. Then, as the work became routine, and repetitive, his mind wandered to greener pastures. It didn’t take him long to work his way through all his grandmother’s books while she watched on, bemused.

In the forest, he wandered further and further from the path, drifting away from his grandmother to explore. 

It was there, in a dappled clearing beside a fallen birch, he first met Michael.

Michael never looked the same twice, as though faces were something they put on in the morning as humans did with clothes, though they always had long golden hair. Jon always knew it was Michael, whatever face they were wearing. 

Michael would be waiting for him off the path, and always seemed happy to see him.

Jon was not a stupid child. He knew that Michael was one of the Good Neighbours, the fair folk that his grandmother and her friends spoke of with such terror and awe. Jon was very careful never to eat or drink anything Michael may offer or grant any favours that could be used against him.

They would walk together until Jon was called away by his grandmother, and they would talk a little. Jon would ask questions about Michael’s home, and Michael would be annoyingly enigmatic, sprinkling enough detail into their vague responses to keep Jon hungry for more.

Jon never told his grandmother about his friend, but from the shrewd looks she sent his way whenever he emerged from the undergrowth with the secret of Michael bursting out from the grin on his face, she no doubt knew anyway.

Jon liked Michael. Michael didn’t treat him like a child – though they didn’t answer as many of his questions as he would like, they nevertheless thought seriously about their answers and didn’t talk down to him as many did to children. They smelt of honeysuckle and summer and were always ethereally beautiful whatever face they wore.

In his secret heart of hearts, Jon would imagine his mother as a golden-haired vision who smelt like Michael.

On one spring day, when the air was damp and fresh and his grandmother was looking for mushrooms sprouting in the soggy ground, Michael looked like a young man with pink cheeks and bright green eyes, his long golden hair curling gently at the ends, and Jon asked him about his name.

‘I have called myself many things,’ Michael said, thoughtfully, lifting a small fallen branch to reveal a fat toad squatting in the shade. ‘Michael is the most recent of those names. It is what people call me now.’

Jon, as usual, was unsatisfied by this answer.

‘What are some of your other names?’ he asked, eagerly, crouching down to admire the toad. It was greyish and ridged, with small piggy eyes that glared reproachfully into the sunlight.

‘None you would know me by,’ Michael said. He looked up, as though scenting the breeze. ‘Your grandmother is looking for you,’ he said, and between one breath and the next, he was gone.

Jon was quite used to Michael’s sudden disappearances by that point and thought nothing of it.

Many years later, when Michael appeared in his office at the Magnus Institute, Jon barely flinched.

The dreams followed - dreams that Jon could never quite remember, but that left him shaking, eyes wet, desperately sad to have been torn away from. Dreams of the land of the fae.

He slept badly and woke racked with longing until he could no longer stand it. Finally, alone in his office and shuddering with the want of it in a way he had never felt before, Jon slipped off his grandmother's ring.

Michael appeared before him in an instant, hand outstretched, beckoning with long, slim fingers.

**

The lockbox was practically vibrating by that point and looked almost too hot to touch.

‘Open it!’ 

‘I…’ Martin stammered. 

Tim rolled his eyes and pushed past him, reaching towards the box. The second his hands made contact he cursed and leapt back, rubbing his hands. His palms were bright red as though burnt.

‘Well, looks like only you can touch it,’ Tim shrugged. ‘It has to be you.’

‘Probably a protection spell,’ Melanie mused, peering at the lockbox from a safe distance. ‘Blood-sealed, maybe, so you can open it.’

‘My mother couldn’t do magic like this,’ Martin said. 

‘She probably hired someone to do it for her, then.’ Melanie shrugged. ‘All they would have needed was some of her blood.’

‘Just get on with it,’ Tim said impatiently. ‘We don’t have time for this: remember? Jon’s been there too long already.’

Martin thought of Jon, trapped with the fair folk forever. No more Jon rolling his eyes at difficult customers, no more Jon grumping about someone finishing the last of the biscuits without refilling the tin, no more of Jon’s sleepy, soft thank yous when Martin brought him a cup of tea after a long day at the Institute.

All Martin had to do was open the box. Open the box and take what was inside.

He reached out a shaking hand. The instant his fingertips brushed the outside, it sprang open like a jack-in-the-box. Martin – and Tim and Melanie, who had both been leaning forward to get a better look – jumped about three foot in the air in shock.

‘Jesus wept,’ Melanie said, clutching her heart. ‘Talk about jumpscares.’

Martin just swallowed with a throat that was suddenly incredibly dry.

In the box, there lay something smooth and dark and soft.

‘Go on,’ Tim said, almost gently. ‘Pick it up. It’s yours.’

Martin reached forward with shaking hands and scooped up the sealskin. It was dark brown, soft and velvety, and somehow still vaguely damp despite spending almost thirty years in a box.

Deep in his chest, something he had never realised was missing slotted back into place.

‘How do you feel?’ Melanie asked, warily.

‘Brilliant,’ Martin breathed. Tim whooped behind him.

‘Of course you do!’ Tim crowed. 

**

Jon felt like he was getting the hang of the pool. If he focused hard on the object or person he wished to know about, the pool would show him a series of scenes related to them. Unfortunately, he was a little vague on whether the scenes were supposed to be connected, and if so, why they were connected.

It was also almost impossible to control what he learnt. After thinking hard about Martin in an attempt to understand his first visions, Jon was pretty sure he’d figured out the context. Martin was a selkie, his skin hidden by his mother after he was born. His father had burnt his mother’s, leaving her with a degenerative wasting disease that had turned Martin into a carer far too soon.

Jon faintly wished that he could undo what he’d done – knowing Martin’s story without his permission felt uncomfortably voyeuristic. But it was too late now.

He’d been more recently focused on his grandmother, and memories of her, as he’d soon discovered that the memories of his parents were too faint for him to properly use as a starting point for the pool. It was incredibly frustrating.

Jon cleared his mind, pictured his grandmother in his mind’s eye – stern, warm, kind – and looked deep into the water.

The first vision - unusually sharp and clear, compared to the ones Jon was used to – showed a young woman in faded overalls and large boots, her hair long and thick, her skin nut-brown from the sun, her eyes bright and young.

It took Jon a few seconds to see his grandmother’s face in the young woman – the same aristocratic cheekbones, the same thin mouth and sharp chin. His grandmother as a young woman was searching the woods for herbs and plants for her profession, as she had done many years later with a young boy trailing behind her.

This young woman was alone – alone as Jon and the vision followed her along her path, until she reached a clearing. There were three figures in that clearing, all unnaturally beautiful and tall, long graceful limbs and shining hair. Though this vision was clear, there was no sound, and Jon watched their mouths move without knowing their words. He could guess, from the sensuous bend of their mouths, of their beckoning fingers, that the Sidhe were offering his grandmother something – whether it was beauty, or eternal life, or love, or wealth, Jon couldn’t say for certain.

He looked into his grandmother’s face and was shocked to see temptation there.

The vision faded.

He tore himself away from the water angrily. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. Maybe he was going about it all wrong – maybe using his grandmother as an anchor wasn’t the way to get to his parents. Maybe he needed to try a different tack.

Bright, clear laughter rang across the clearing, making him jump. Jon looked up, startled. Behind him, the old man started to chuckle.

Across the water, dappled in light from the tree canopy, stood two lithe figures. Both were clearly fae and uncannily beautiful, their hair long and lustrous, their faces sculpted like marble, their eyes wild as the Hunt.

Neither had a stitch of clothing on.

They reminded him vaguely of Tim, Jon thought, as they began to approach. They were tall and willowy, with hair of sunlit gold and eyes the purple of a stormy sky. Perhaps they had been reading his mind, or maybe were just watching where his eyes lingered, because even as he thought of Tim it was the more masculine of the two who came closer.

Jon blinked, and they were right before him. His nose was full of the thick scent of honeysuckle and spice, cutting through the fresh scent of the forest around him.

They opened their mouth to speak, and Jon couldn’t help it. He laughed.

The fae looked affronted.

‘Am I not a vision from your wildest dreams?’ he asked, for his voice was low and husky, similar to that actor’s voice that Jon had overheard Tim calling ‘sex on legs’.

‘Is this another temptation?’ Jon asked the old man, leaning away from the long fingers trying to tangle in his hair.

The old man’s chuckles died away, and he actually looked surprised – or at least, the eye not covered by the eyepatch widened slightly.

There was a pair of hands stroking their way down his chest – Jon gently grasped them by the wrists and pushed them away.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but you won’t tempt me this way.’

The two of them pulled away a little, pouting, even as behind Jon the old man began to laugh again.

'You keep on surprising me,' he said. 'Maybe you will escape this place, after all.'

 _That's the plan_ , Jon thought, as he watched the unnaturally beautiful fae twins slink off with sullen expressions on their sharp faces. _That's the plan._

His face was damp with sweat; he reached down and drew up some of the water with cupped hands, splashing it liberally onto his face. A drop went into his left eye and stung slightly, and when he looked up his brain tried to show him two separate images. His right eye showed the beautiful twins walking off into the lush, deep forest with their hips still swaying - but the left eye showed two strange, eldritch creatures with sharp limbs and unnatural pale skin slope off into a dark, forbidding treeline with dead, gnarled trees and ghostly bulbous mushrooms.

Then he blinked again, and the stinging died down, and the forest around him was fully alive and green once more.

**

This time the doorway didn't push Martin back and he stepped onto the beach with the others, the sea air ruffling his hair.

'What now?' Sasha asked. 

Tim shrugged, and looked at Martin.

'This is your rescue mission,' he said, pointedly. 'What now?'

Martin had no idea.

Melanie was ignoring all of them and peering out at the horizon.

'Can you guys see that?' she asked, one hand shading her eyes, the other gesturing to the vanishing point. Martin squinted into the distance.

'Is that a boat?' Sasha asked.

It was, indeed, a boat, coming inorexorably closer.

'I guess that answers that question,' Martin said.

'I don't like this,' Melanie said, still peering at the approaching boat. 'It looks wrong. It looks unnatural.'

'We're going to Tir Na N'Og,' Tim said, 'I think it's supposed to be unnatural.'

The boat was a wooden skiff that scraped against the pebbled shore in front of them. There was a single figure standing in it, hands around a pole.

'You'd need oars on this kind of swell,' Tim said. He was summarily ignored by the others. Martin took off his shoes, tucked his socks into them, and rolled up his jeans before wading into the waves. He put his shoes onto the boat and climbed up after them. The figure, tall and cowled, said nothing, and made no move to stop him. Martin made himself as comfortable as he could on one of the two wooden benches and gestured to the others to follow him.

Melanie and Sasha were quick to clamber on and sit down. Tim hemmed and hawed on the beach a bit longer.

'Can't I just swim?' he shouted.

'Just get in the boat, Tim,' Sasha called back. 'Stop wasting time.'

Tim was too tall for the bench - he had to practically fold himself in half to sit down, knees by his ears, and he grumbled like an angry concertina as the boatman began to punt them away from the shore.

Eventually Tim fell silent, and the only sounds were the waves slapping gently against the side of the boat, the distant caw of gulls, and the faint crash of surf on the shore that grew fainter the further they went.

'Where are we going?' Martin asked, into the silence. The boatman said nothing and kept on pushing them into the open water. 'Where are you taking us?'

'Martin,' Melanie said, tugging his sleeve and shaking her head. 'Don't.’

Martin fell silent and waited.  
Strangely, the further they went, the flatter the waves became, until the boat was gliding through water as still as a millpond. The salt sea breeze dropped and the air was still, and smelt of old, standing water. The gulls no longer called.

'We're not on the sea any more,' Tim whispered from between his knees, sounding incredibly uncomfortable. Martin could feel it too - the difference between the vastness of the sea beneath them to the claustrophobia of an inland lake.

Then the mist began to gather on the mirror-like surface of the water, collecting in swirls around the pole as the boatman pushed them onward. The mist rose higher, swirled thicker, decreasing their world to just a few feet around the boat and the inside of the boat. Martin looked to the others and saw that Melanie and Sasha were holding hands as they stared out at the silent, white world. Tim's clammy hand brushed his, making him jump, but he took it gratefully and held out his other hand to Sasha. The four of them held onto each other as the mist turned fog began to draw in. It felt heavy and solid in the air - Martin could taste its coldness on his tongue. It was making it hard to breathe.

The fog closed in completely, turning Martin's world white and blank and empty. Tim's hand tightened its grasp even as Sasha's hand twitched in panic.

Martin couldn't breathe. He panicked, sucking in deep gulps of air, but there was nothing but fog. He felt dizzy and shut his eyes - just for a moment - just to escape the heavy white blankness pressing hard onto his eyeballs. Behind his eyelids the world was dark and cool.

Martin felt himself fall.

**

The old man had long since fallen asleep. His rumbling snores caused little ripples in the surface of the pool, warping the images and muddying the clear waters.

‘You won’t see any more like that.’

Jon’s head snapped up and he stared directly into bright yellow eyes. Something primal in his brain locked his body in place – a natural prey response. But there was also something captivating about those eyes, that soft as silk voice. His instincts warred against each other, one side telling him to flee, and the other desperate to get closer.

Michael had had many forms when they’d visited Jon, back in his childhood, but they had always looked human. Even when they had been in Jon’s office a day ago, hand outstretched, returning as they had promised with an offer he couldn’t refuse, they had been human. Beautiful and ethereal, but human.

Here, in the dappled light of the forest stuck in eternal spring, Michael no longer looked like a Michael. Their face was more angular than was possible in a human face, skin luminous as though lit from within. When they smiled, it was to reveal a row of sharp, shark-like teeth.

‘Now, Jon,’ Michael said, waving a hand with impossibly long fingers at the clearing surrounding them. ‘You’re being very unadventurous.’

Jon’s knees creaked loudly in the silence as he clambered to his feet.

‘Would going further mean I couldn’t go back?’ Jon asked. He didn’t trust Michael – he wasn’t stupid enough to trust any fae – but he _knew_ Michael. Better the devil you knew, after all.

Michael tilted their sharp head.

‘You wanted knowledge,’ Michael said. ‘I can take you deeper, to where you will find it. This is but a small example of the kind of power one can gain in this place.’

‘And would I be able to get back?’ Jon asked again – very aware that Michael hadn’t answered his question.

Michael shrugged in a fluid motion that should not have been possible for something composed of so many pronounced angles.

‘You said they would tempt me,’ Jon said, turning back to the old man. ‘Is this one of their games?’

‘No,’ the old man sighed. ‘They never come in person. This is… unusual.’

Jon looked back up at Michael. They still had a hand outstretched, the long, spindly fingers curled slightly in invitation.

‘You came here for a reason, Jon,’ Michael said. ‘All your life, you’ve wanted to know. Do you really want to come so close and just… give up?’

Jon sighed. The want burned hot inside his chest, but there was still a nagging voice of reason inside his head that sounded just like his grandmother.

He looked at Michael’s face, recognisable from so many days in his childhood, and the want won out.

‘Ok,’ he said, finally. ‘Ok.’

**

Martin woke up with a deep, lung-wrenching gasp that ripped out of his throat almost painfully. His face was on the ground, pressed hard against pebbles and stones. He pushed himself upright with a groan and looked around.

He was on another pebbled beach, this time surrounded by still, quiet lakewater. The fog had receded to a gentle mist, and there was no sign of the boat. He looked around, but he was completely alone. On the other side of him, the pebbles turned to rocks turned to grass and forest. Everywhere was completely silent and empty, except for him.

He scrambled to his feet, grabbing his sealskin from where it lay rather pathetically on the ground and brushing off the sand and grit from the soft, sleek fur.

'Tim? Sasha! Melanie! TIM!'

There was no answer but for his own echoing voice.

He walked along the beach, shouting for the others, for what felt like eternity. There was no answer until he peered into the mists and saw the outline of a figure. It looked too small to be Tim, too masculine to be Melanie or Sasha, and too obviously not Jon.

Martin approached cautiously anyway. Anyone was better than being alone in the mists.

'Hello?' he called. 'Who's there?'

The figure walked towards him, and his features coalesced out from the mist like an image rendering.

'Martin,' said his father, 'look how much you've grown.'

Martin realised he was clutching his coat so hard his knuckles were white, and he tried to relax his hands.

‘Hi, Dad,’ he said, cautiously. ‘You’re – you’re dead.’

His father didn’t seem to hear him and kept on advancing slowly with his hands outstretched.

‘I loved you and your mother so much, you know,’ he crooned, in that soft, wheedling voice Martin had always hated as a child. It was the voice his dad would use when he’d forgotten to pick him up from school, or forgotten his birthday, or promised to take him to the park and forgotten that too. It was the voice his dad used when he wanted forgiveness without having to apologise.

‘You’re a monster,’ Martin breathed. 

‘Aw, Martin,’ his dad said, still crooning, still coming closer. ‘I just wanted us to be a family. Forever. If I’d hidden your mother’s skin, she would have found it one day and left us alone. You didn’t want her to leave us, did you? If I destroyed it, she would stay with us forever.’

Martin thought of his mother’s empty, distant eyes, and gripped his coat tightly again.

‘She left me anyway,’ he snarled. ‘Thanks to you.’

It was the legends, then, that had got to his father, got into his head and roosted there. The legends of mermaids and selkies finding their skins or their caps and abandoning their human families, the call of the sea and their brothers and sisters too strong for them to overcome. The myth that, deep down, selkies and mermaids and sirens weren’t much more than dumb animals, incapable of escaping from ingrained instinct, unable to use higher thought or rational decision-making.

It was those kinds of stereotypes that Martin and the others worked so hard to dispel at the Institute by cataloguing life stories from all sorts of magical creatures.

His coat was warm in his hands – it called to him to put it on, to dive into the lake waters and escape his father and his empty words.

But that would be too easy. Martin knew his father was dead – he’d watched him waste away on a hospital bed over a decade ago, his mother already growing distant beside him. All he’d ever wanted was a proper family. In his childlike heart he’d always blamed his mother’s illness, and by extension his mother, for ruining his life and his childhood by not trying hard enough to remember him, for watching his father die without seeming to care, for not being a proper mother. He ranted and railed against the world, wishing he had a villain to blame.

And all along, it had been his father’s fault.

‘Give me your skin,’ said the man who looked like his father. ‘Give me your skin, and we can be a proper family.’

Martin looked down at his sealskin clutched in his fist.

‘I don’t have time for this,’ he said, quietly. ‘You’re just an… an illusion, or something. Trying to stop me getting further in. I need to get to Jon. And the others,’ he added, belatedly. ‘Just tell me how to get to them.’

His father cocked his head, almost animalistic, like a confused dog.

‘But family means everything to you,’ he said, sounding almost confused.

Martin laughed, a little bitterly.

‘And they’re the closest thing I have to one, even if they don’t feel the same,’ he said. ‘Sasha and Tim, and Melanie. And Jon.’

The thing that wore his father’s face heaved a great sigh.

‘I can see when I’m beaten,’ it said in a very different voice. It scrutinised Martin a little while longer, scrunching up his father’s face in an almost comedic fashion. ‘You know,’ it said, ‘you might have a chance. A small one.’

Then it vanished, and Martin was alone.

He sat down heavily, his fingers digging subconsciously into the fine white sand, and he tried to get his breathing back under control.

He wasn’t alone for long.

Soon after his father’s imposter vanished, Tim came bursting through the thick trees by the beach and ran straight to the water. He walked in up to his waist, shoulders shaking, and only responded to Martin’s voice after he’d submerged himself fully.

‘You – made it through?’ Martin asked, delicately. Tim just nodded as he walked back onto the shore, dripping.

Melanie arrived next, at a much more sedate pace than Tim, wandering towards them along the beach. She looked pale but collected. Martin politely avoided looking at the dried tear tracks on her cheeks.

‘Just Sasha left, then?’ she said, ignoring Tim’s drenched clothes and Martin’s skin still clutched in his arms.

'Yeah,' Martin said. 'Just Sasha.'

'And then...' Tim trailed off, looking into the thick trees he had burst from a few moments before.

'Then we go further in,' Melanie finished.

**

'You have your archives,' Michael said, airily, waving a long-fingered hand, 'and we have ours.'

Jon looked around at the vast lines of shelves, all full of beautifully hide-bound books. The lights and tables and chairs were all ornately gilded and carved, the furnishings sumptuous, luxurious.

Jon could imagine his grandmother turning her nose up at such unnecessary finery. He blinked, once, twice, and between blinks the luxury vanished, overlaid by mould-slicked rock walls and dripping stalagmites. Then it was normal, again, and he was left only with the after-impression of the dank cave and a shooting pain in his temple.

‘You could stay here, with us,’ Michael said, his voice soft as velvet. ‘You would be happy here. We have everything you could want.’

Jon thought about what he might need. He thought about Elias hand-picking interesting cases to keep his interest piqued, Tim constantly fighting against his authority like a recalcitrant teenager, Melanie telling him when he was ‘on his bullshit again’, Martin bringing him tea, Martin making sure he didn’t stay overnight at the Institute, Martin buying two extra paninis on the days when Jon was too busy to eat and claiming it was a mistake before giving them both to him.

Jon looked around the archives of the sidhe and was, to his surprise, unimpressed. He thought of the messy filing rooms of the archives, his desk with his carefully selected piles of files and cases. He thought of the endless streams of people who were drawn every day into the institute to share their stories. He thought of all the knowledge stored, all the knowledge _gained_. Looking around at the beautifully bound books in shining mahogany bookcases, Jon could sense the static nature of the room. There was knowledge in here, and it was old, and there was a part of him desperate to read these books.

'Stay, archivist,' Michael crooned. 'Stay here, where you belong.'

Jon wondered why Michael was still asking. He'd wandered right into the spider's web - he was right in the heart of Tir Na N'Og. But somehow he still had a choice. There was something still separating him from the fae, something tying him to Earth.

He thought about everything there was still to learn about the supernatural, back in the real world, away from the glamour and luxury of this false world.

'How long do I have?' he asked.

Michael blinked.

'How long?' they asked, head cocked like a confused dog.

'I had three days and three nights,' Jon said. 'I came here of my own free will. How long of that time do I have left?'

Michael stared at him, eyes wide and shining.

'You have less than a day,' they said. 'You have until then to decide.'

That was better than Jon was expecting.

'I'll tell you my decision before that time expires,' he said. Michael didn't look happy about that but inclined their head anyway.

'We shall see you then, archivist,' they said, before abruptly blinking out of existence.

Jon was left alone in the library, skin prickling, heart beating like he'd sprinted a hundred metres.

He hoped he would be strong enough to refuse, when the time came.

**

Sasha emerged from the treeline just as Martin was beginning to get antsy, and walked towards them with a blank, vague face. Martin tried to ignore it – they were running out of time.

It had been some sort of test, then, a trial to allow them true entry into the land of youth. Martin clutched his sealskin close with white-knuckled hands and looked at the pale faces of the others.

'Did anyone else... no,' Tim said, shaking his head. 'I'd rather not talk about it, actually.'

'Yeah,' Melanie said, shivering. 'We all made it - that's what matters.'

Sasha said nothing and looked blankly into the middle distance.

Martin took it upon himself to rally the troups.

'We're so close, now,' he said. 'We've gone through the hard part - now we just need to find Jon.'

'And somehow get the sidhe to give him to us,' Tim said. 'Yeah, that sounds like the _easy_ part.'

'Shut up, Tim,' Melanie said, though not unkindly.

'Here goes nothing, then. I guess,' Tim said, rolling his shoulders back and advancing into the forest.

They walked for a while before coming across an old man wearing an eyepatch slumbering - rather noisily - by a small pool. Melanie coughed as they drew closer, and the old man woke up with a cough and a splutter.

'Oh,' he said, peering at them with his one eye. 'So you came for him after all. I was beginning to wonder.'

'You've seen Jon?' Martin asked, excited. His heart began to beat a little faster and the ring around his finger seemed to pulse with latent heat.

'He was here,' the old man said, nodding towards the pool. 'For longer than I expected, too. But he failed the third time, when they came to tempt him.'

'He's gone deeper in?'

'He was escorted in,' the old man said, 'by one of the powerful duane sidhe. I'm sorry that you've come all this way for nothing, but I'm afraid your friend has been claimed already.'

'No,' Martin breathed. He couldn't have come this far just to fail now. They were nearly there - so nearly there.

'Fucking typical Jon,' Tim said. 'He couldn't have waited a bit longer?'

'Which way?' Martin asked the old man.

'Martin...' Melanie said, reaching out to touch his arm. 'I don't think-'

'Which way did they go?' 

The old man laughed.

'Further in,' he said. 'To the heart of the forest.'

'Then that's where we go next,' Martin said. He clutched his skin closer. 'We go in further.'

The others cast worried glances at each other before following him into the trees, leaving the old man behind them, still chuckling.

'They have him now,' he called after them. 'He's theirs.'

Martin ignored him and pressed on, missing the look exchanged between Melanie and Tim. 

'We've come this far,' Melanie said, shrugging. 

'Into the lion's den, then,' Tim sighed.

Sasha followed them silently.

As they walked, the thick forest around them changed indiscernibly to ornately carved wooden walls, draped with green silks and decorated with golden accents. The peat mulch of the floor transitioned into a soft, thick carpet. The sounds of birds and insects and rustling leaves became gentle music drifting in the air as though piped through the walls. Candles flickered in wall sconces, sending golden light dancing across their skin.

Martin ignored it all and kept walking. The ring was getting hotter and hotter, the metal almost cherry red and burning, but in the land of Tir Na N'Og he felt no pain. 

**

'Your time is almost up,' Michael sing-songed, as they advanced across the room towards Jon. The room had filled with other sidhe slowly over time, all pretending to be disinterested but constantly shooting Jon sideways glances. Jon's skin hadn't stopped prickling in hours, painfully aware of the inhuman eyes following his every move. He'd been staring at the same page in a book for what felt like forever, unable to concentrate on the words.

But now Michael had returned. He'd run out of time. 

'Can I ask a question?' Jon said. 'Before I decide?'

'So, ask,' Michael said, hands outstretched. 

'I want to know about my parents,' Jon said, his voice trembling. His stomach swooped as though he were standing on the edge of a precipice, looking down into the void with the intent to jump. 

Michael tilted their head.

'Hmm,' they said, sonorous. Then they laughed. The sound echoed off the cold marble walls, harmonising with itself until it rang like an alarm in Jon's weak, human ears.

'How did they die?' Jon said, pushing on through the laughter that swirled around him. 'What were they like? Why would my grandmother never tell me about them? Who _were_ they?'

'Your grandmother did you a disservice,' Michael said, still smiling, achingly beautiful and terrifying all at once. His sharp teeth glinted from inside his stretched lips. 'By not telling you, she made it your driving force. And those with a clear goal are so easily diverted.'

'Tell me,' Jon gritted his teeth. 'I've come with you for this.'

'Oh, I'll tell you. This is a bad deal for you, you know,' Michael said, 'I would have told you eventually, to try and tempt you here.'

'Tell me!'

Jon didn't even realise he'd shouted until his own words rebounded off the echoey vaulted ceilings and rang in his ears. His hands were curled into tight fists, nails cutting into the soft flesh of his palms.

Michael draped themselves over a velvet-lined chair, shaped like a throne, and smiled benevolently down at Jon's rage.

'Your grandmother is at true fault - for your parents' apparent deaths and your own obsessions. No wonder she spent most of your childhood trying to turn you away from the fae.'

Jon shook his head. It didn't make any sense. 'What do you mean?'

'She was always committed to the life of a witch, but wasn't willing to give up having a family. She desired - _craved_ \- and if there's something we fae are good at, it's smelling out those kinds of cravings. So, three of us made her an offer.' Michael inspected their nails, as though bored. 'The normal sort of offer - your greatest wish, for a price to be paid in favour to the sidhe in the future.'

Jon nodded.

'What did she ask for?'

'A child. Your mother.'

'My - mother was a...?'

'Born from Sidhe magic, but not herself fae - the difference is subtle, I'll grant you, but it is there. Either your grandmother thought her homegrown magicks were strong enough to protect her daughter, or the future always felt too distant to worry about, I'm afraid I don't know. But the time came to repay her debt, and the Sidhe wanted what we always want - what is ours.'

'My mother,' Jon said.

'Correct!' Michael giggled. 'Like I said to your grandmother, think of her more as a loan than a gift. She belonged with us, anyway. Just as you do.'

Jon flinched. 

'I'm not of sidhe magic,' he said, shaking his head. 'I'd know - it'd be obvious to most of my colleagues too.'

'You were your mother's child,' Michael shrugged, 'and therefore ours. Have you never wondered why you so desperately seek knowledge? You have our avarice running through your veins, desperate for stories. And you belong here,' Michael gestured at the grand hall expansively, 'with us.'

Jon looked around at the cold marble walls, pink-veined and smooth and inlaid with golden patterns that led the eye down endless optical illusions. He looked again, and his cleansed eye - the eye he'd stung with water from the old man's pool - saw double once more, overlaying the image of the opulent hall with dark, rough cave walls and mossy rock floors. Michael's face flickered between unearthly beauty and unearthly horror, angles and sharp lines that shifted and slid under Jon's strange double vision.

This wasn't anything except an empty land with a glamour cast over it. The sidhe lived in their own glamour like pigs in muck, angler fish luring in prey with bright lights and colours.

'How did my parents die?' he asked. He was proud of how steady his voice was.

'Die? Oh, archivist, your grandmother _lied_. They didn't die. They came home.'

Michael held their long fingers out, looking around the shifting, fluttering silk and marble, rock and moss with a content smile on their face. 'Your grandmother could no longer hide her from us, and she chose to come home. Your father came too, of course, but you - your grandmother had you too well protected.'

'Then... they're here?' Jon asked, in a small voice, breath catching in his throat.

Michael laughed again, high and shrieking. Rock and marble, carpet and moss. Jon felt drunk, lightheaded, mind swimming with so much contrasting information.

'Here? Oh no - I'm sorry, Jon, but humans - even humans born of sidhe magic - don't last long in Tir Na N'Og. Your mother lasted well for around ten years, but even she deteriorated after that.' 

Michael's smile split his face.

The overload of information was giving Jon a headache like a vice clamped around his head. He rubbed a temple, eyesight going fuzzy and speckled with black.

'You'll last around that time, I think,' Michael said, their voice very matter-of-fact. 'Probably less.'

Jon swayed where he stood. His grandmother's voice spoke disapprovingly, cutting through the headache.

'Stupid boy. What did I tell you about the sidhe?'

'I - I need to leave,' he said, faintly.

'You can't. You belong here, archivist. You failed the third temptation.' Michael had moved closer - too close - and stroked a long, cold, sharp finger down Jon's cheek. 'A favour for a favour. I answered your question. I took you here. You owe me a favour, now.' Jon's eyelids finally gave up the fight and slid shut. His knees wobbled.

'You lied to me,' he whispered, barely enough energy to move his lips. Michael laughed, high and delighted.

'You're ours now.'

'WAIT!'

Jon's legs finally gave way and his knees hit the floor hard, sending shocks up his body. But the voice - that familiar voice - gave him a small surge of strength and he used it to prise open one eyelid.

Martin - somehow, confusingly, wonderfully - was standing in the hall, facing Michael and the other present sidhe with a set, determined face. Behind him, looking varying amounts of tired and drained, stood his other assistants.

'You're too late,' Michael trilled gleefully, one hand still cold on Jon's cheek. 'He's _ours_.'

'Martin,' Jon croaked out. 

Martin shot him a wild, desperate look before staring down Michael again.

'You can't take him,' Martin said, his voice trembling but still loud and strong. 

'And why not?' Michael sounded amused - a cat playing with a mouse.

'Because Jonathan Sims owes me a favour,' Martin said, swallowing.

There was a loud, resounding silence.

'What?' Michael hissed through thin lips.

'He owes me a favour.' Martin's voice was stronger and clearer now. Behind him, Melanie looked smug. Tim looked gobsmacked. Sasha looked like she was somewhere else.

'And what favour would this be?'

'I gave him a gift,' Martin said, rolling his shoulders slightly, unconsciously squaring up to his opponent. There was something different about him, Jon realised. Over his shoulder lay a smooth coat, sleek and shining. 'He promised that he would fulfil a favour in return. That favour has yet to be repaid.'

There was another long silence. Michael had turned to face Martin directly, drawn up to his full height.

'He is ours!' Michael screeched.

'Wait,' said a calmer, moderated voice from the side-lines. Another sidhe stood forward, stepping gracefully as a dancer on the rough moss/lush carpet. They were draped in purple silks and wore violets twined in their dark hair. 'Is this true?'

The sidhe was looking down at Jon with startlingly purple eyes.

Jon remembered a cup of tea, and a freely given promise.

'Yes,' Jon said.

The purple sidhe turned to Michael.

'We do not take debts lightly,' they said, their voice beautiful and light. Jon couldn't help shivering at the undercurrent of menace. Even Michael shrunk away slightly.

'But he is ours,' Michael said, weakly. 'My lady -'

'I pay my debts and favours, as do you. Let him pay his,' she said, nodding towards Jon.

'He came here willingly,' Michael argued.

'And how do we know you won't just snatch him right back once he's paid back his favour?' Tim called out.

Everyone looked at Tim, who looked surprised at his own bravery.

The purple lady moved towards Jon, and Michael shrunk away from her as she drew close. She leant down and held his chin in a cold, pale hand.

'You do not truly belong here,' she said, purple eyes staring directly into Jon's. 'Even Tir Na N'Og cannot satisfy your cravings. But you would be useful.'

Jon tried to keep his eyes open, but the pain in his head was reaching a crescendo and they began to water.

The Lady let his chin go, and his head slumped down to his chest. There was the sound of a small scuffle, and Jon peered through heavy eyelids to see Tim restraining Martin.

'You have one chance to take him back,' the Lady said, staring at the four of them, dirty and grimy and incredibly human, out of place surrounded by perfect, inhuman sidhe. 'Leave here. At midnight, we will let him go. You can keep him - if you can hold on to him.'

She snapped her fingers, and the four of them vanished. The last thing Jon saw was Martin’s panicked face.

'No,' Jon sighed, before the headache finally overtook him and he slipped into unconsciousness.

**

Martin woke up to Tim shaking him.

'Come on,' he said, gently, helping him off the damp grass. 'We're planning.'

They were next to the mound with the rock door, back in the real world, kicked out of Tir Na N'Og. Tim led him over to a bench where Sasha and Melanie were already sitting. Melanie gave him a small smile - Sasha stared vacantly into space.

'So, what do we have?' Tim asked, all brusque and business-like, clapping his hands together.

Martin raised his eyebrows. 'You've changed your tune.’ 

'What can I say? It feels like we actually have a chance, now,' Tim said, winking. 'Plus, we all got out of there unscathed, so I'm feeling pretty optimistic.'

'That was a great call with the whole favour thing, by the way,' Melanie said. 'How did you know that would work?'

Martin shrugged.

'I didn't,' he said, honestly. 'It just... it felt right.'

'Well, now what? Got any more feelings?' Tim asked, not unkindly.

Martin looked down at his hands. He had lots of conflicting feelings, and in the cacophony he couldn't discern which ones were the right ones. He kept seeing Jon in his mind's eye, drawn and tired, eyes shut in pain. He had looked pale and ethereal, already becoming part of the land of youth. Distant from them. Distant from the world. Distant from Martin.

'Hey!' 

The shout echoed around the devil's punchbowl, and all four of them turned to look in unison. Basira ran towards them, eyes wide, Daisy following on behind with affected disinterest.

'You made it,' Basira said, a little breathlessly, as she reached their bench. 'Did you... where's Jon?'

Martin shared a look with Tim.

'They didn't want to let him go,' Tim said, 'but Martin somehow managed to convince a sidhe in purple to give us a chance to get him back.'

Basira's mouth dropped open.

'P-purple?' she said faintly.

'Yeah,' Melanie said, 'and violets, here,' gesturing to her hair.

'That's... that's the queen,' Basira whispered. 'You - the queen was there?'

'Wow, Martin,' Tim said, clapping him on the shoulder, 'looks like you did even better than we thought.'

'But we don't know what to do now,' Melanie pointed out.

'What did she...' Basira gulped, 'what did she say? Exactly?'

'She said - said something about letting him go at midnight,' Martin said.

Daisy, having caught up, rolled her eyes.

'You've got time, then,' Basira said. 'But you need to be ready.’

'What do I need to do?' Martin asked.

Basira just looked at him.

'How far are you willing to go?'

**

Melanie trailed her hands over the rough graves, following the lines of carved dates and names and scratching off the moss that grew thick on the older stones. Basira was busy directing the others on various hunts for churchyard mould and St-John's wort, while Daisy smoked by the police car and pretended not to be interested.

Melanie liked graveyards. She liked the peace of the dead, the faint auras of love and connection that lingered in the bouquets of flowers and small photos left on the graves. She enjoyed the sight of the odd gentle spirit as they passed close to the veil. As one who was especially sensitive to the veil and those just beyond, a graveyard was like a gentle pressure on her brain, like static or white noise. 

St Jude's Church graveyard was old, peaceful, and well-cared for. It was full of good and happy memories, long-lasting lineages, and happy families resting together. She breathed in the quiet and calm and let herself untense.

She didn't like it so much when a cold hand came down heavily on her shoulder.

'Jesus _christ_ ,' she gasped, whirling around with her hands out.

The spirit of the old woman crossed her arms and frowned disapprovingly. She looked surprisingly solid for the time of day - Melanie very rarely saw such embodied spirits so early into dusk.

'There's no need for that,' the old woman said primly, 'I'm just trying to help.'

'You almost gave me a heart attack,' Melanie said, a hand to her chest.

'You should be used to spirits reaching out to you,' the old woman said. 'What kind of medium are you?'

'One that doesn't like being snuck up on in a graveyard! Wait - you want to help? How do you know what we're doing?'

'You're trying to rescue my ridiculous grandson from the sidhe,' she said, rolling her eyes. 'I've been keeping track of you all - except when you went into the mound, of course. Though it sounds like the selkie did well enough.'

'You're... Jon's grandmother?' 

'Yes, keep up,' the ghost snapped. 'I want to help. Your fae friend,' she said, with a haughty sniff, 'knows some important parts, but not all.'

'She's only part fae,' Melanie said, annoyed. 'And what makes you think you can help any more than she can?'

'Because I've done this before, and I failed,' the ghost snapped. 'And I don't want you - or the selkie, or the siren, or whoever does it in the end - to fail as I did.'

'Oh. Uh, should I get the others?'

'Only you can see or hear me,' the ghost of Jon's grandmother admitted, a little awkwardly. 'I wasn't strong enough to pierce the veil so early on in the day.'

'You look pretty good from my perspective,' Melanie offered.

The ghost gave her a considering look.

'Thank you,' she said, primly. 'But I don't have unlimited strength, and we've already wasted time chinwagging over nothing - so pay attention. They'll release Jon at midnight, and one of you has to hold onto him until dawn.'

'Hold on?'

'It's not as easy as it sounds,' the ghost said, wryly. 'They'll put glamours on him, change his shape - but you mustn't let go. If you let go, he stays with them forever.'

'Ok, got it,' Melanie said. 'If it's a strong bearhug we need, we'll probably send Martin in.'

'That's the easy part,' the ghost said. 'When dawn comes, make sure to cover him with something to keep him here.'

'You mean, like a jumper?'

'You need to cover him - it doesn't really matter what with. It's symbolic - you're saying that you'll keep him safe and care for him, more than the fae ever could. It's the most important part - the final step.'

'Cover him, right,' Melanie said, nodding. 'I think I've got it. I'll pass it on to Martin.'

'The selkie is probably the best choice,' Jon's grandmother agreed. Melanie felt uncomfortably like she was going to have to tell Martin he got Jon's dead relative's blessing.

'Ok, great. We'll do our best,' she promised.

'Just save him,' the ghost said, looking, for the first time, like she was genuinely worried. 'And... and tell him I'm sorry. And that I tried.'

She was looking less substantial now, even as the sunlight dwindled. Melanie doubted she could touch her anymore, so she took a risk.

'Who did you try to rescue?' she asked, quickly, as the spirit faded with the sun. 'Who couldn't you save?'

Jon's grandmother smiled sadly as her face lost definition.

'My daughter,' she said, before she vanished.

**

Melanie passed on the first part of Jon's grandmother's instructions to the group - that their task was to hold on to Jon's glamoured body until dawn.

'I'll do it,' Martin said, as they gathered by the graveyard entrance with hands overflowing with their gathered spoils. Tim rolled his eyes.

'Like you'd let anyone else do it,' he snorted. 'Besides, you're probably the strongest. If anyone can keep hold of a shapeshifting body, it would be you.'

It didn't sound like a dig at his weight, and for once Martin didn't take offence at the comment about his size. It was true, after all.

'It won't be easy,' Basira said.

'Nothing has been easy so far,' Martin said. 'Why would this be any different?'

'That's the spirit,' Tim said, slapping him on the back. His hand lingered, warm and strangely comforting on Martin's shoulder blade.

'We should probably go back to the punchbowl,' Martin said.

'Not yet - we need food, first.' Tim pulled out his phone. 'There's a tescos not far from here - we could go get stuff before it closes.'

'This isn't some sort of camping trip,' Martin protested, but the others ignored him.

On the way back to the cars, Basira pulled Martin to the side and whispered in his ear.

'Is Sasha alright?'

'Yeah?' Martin glanced at Sasha - she was still looking into the distance with that strange, thousand-yard stare, and had been unusually quiet since their return to the real world, but none of them had been particularly verbose after their task.

'We went through some stuff on - on the island,' Martin said. 'It just hit her hard, that's all.'

'There's something not right,' Basira said, scrunching up her nose. 'I can't put my finger on it, but it's not right.'

Daisy watched them approach with a bored expression.

'You done?' she drawled.

'Yes, thanks!' Tim answered brightly. 'How nice of you to wait around for us!'

Daisy scowled at the back of his head as he clambered into the car.

'Hey, Martin? Do you want to come in my car?' Melanie asked. Basira was already getting into the passenger side next to Daisy, Tim in the back wearing a shit-eating grin and already getting on Daisy's nerves. Martin never understood why Tim enjoyed antagonising the detective so much, apart from the fact that she was one of the few completely impervious to Tim's siren charms.

'Uh, sure,' he said, diverting towards Melanie's old fiat punto. Sasha was already sat in the back, staring straight ahead.

The drive to tescos was short, and the rush through the shop even shorter, and Melanie only broke the silence on the way back to the punchbowl.

She did so with an awkward cough, clearing her throat.

'The spirit in the graveyard,' she said, quickly. 'It was Jon's grandmother.'

'What? Why didn't you say anything?'

'It felt too... personal, to share with everyone.'

'You mean, with Daisy lurking in the background?'

Melanie shrugged.

'Yeah, I guess. She - she said...'

'Yeah?'

'She said that, when dawn comes, you have to cover Jon with something - it's symbolic, or whatever.'

'Ok,' Martin said, slowly. 'Anything else?'

'Stuff for Jon, really.'

'O...kay,' Martin said, slowly. 'You can tell him when we get him back.'

Melanie shot him a look, quickly looking away from the road.

'You seem pretty optimistic,' she said, with a small smile.

'Well, why not?' Martin threw up his hands. 'We've come this far, right? Why shouldn't we succeed?'

Melanie looked up into the rear-view mirror to see Sasha's vacant expression and shrugged.

'I hope you're right,' she said.

 _So do I_ , Martin thought.

**

They got back to the doorway as night fell, with three hours ‘til midnight. Martin clutched his sealskin in one hand and a bunch of St-John’s wort in the other, and tried to unclench his jaw. There wasn't much else to do other than eat their strange picnic dinner and go over the plan. It felt odd, having a picnic at night in the middle of winter. Melanie huddled deeper and deeper into her coat and scarf, her teeth chattering audibly. Tim looked mildly uncomfortable, but he only wore a denim jacket over his plain t-shirt. Martin was perfectly comfortable in only his t-shirt and jeans - he'd always run warm, and very rarely felt cold unless the temperature dropped to bitterly low levels - and, in hindsight, it perhaps wasn't so easily explained away by his slight extra padding.

He wondered how much of his life had been secretly affected by his selkie blood without him knowing.

Tim brandished a pork pie in his direction, snapping him back to the present.

‘You should eat,’ he said, through a mouthful of monster munch. ‘You’ll need it for later.’

Martin's stomach roiled uncomfortably.

‘I don’t think I’ll be able to keep anything down,’ he said, honestly. 

‘It’s going to be a long night,’ Melanie said, looking down across the devil’s punchbowl. The night air was thick with the scent of rhododendrons. ‘It’s weird, being so close to the gateway. I can feel their world pushing into ours, like static.’

‘Smells like ozone,’ Tim said, still eating. ‘Like a thunderstorm.’

Martin was too busy freaking out to analyse the smells of the night air but nodded along anyway. 

‘Can we go over the plan again?’ he asked, taking the pork pie just to stop Tim waving it in his face.

Tim and Melanie sighed in stereo.

‘We’ve been through it about half a dozen times,’ Tim said, using his longsuffering voice. 

‘What if I forget? You know, in the heat of the moment?’

‘I don’t think I will ever forget it,’ Melanie said, groaning, rubbing her forehead. ‘I think it’s indelibly etched into my skull by this point.’

'One more time?' 

'Look,' Melanie said, one hand rubbing her temples, 'when Jon appears, you grab him and don't let go until the sun comes up. The rest of us will from a protective circle around you with our various ‘fae-be-gone’ accoutrements.’ She brandished her rowan wood staff, which was a fancy way of describing a rather large twig she’d snapped off the small rowan tree in the graveyard. ‘Got it?'

'Yeah,' Martin said, staring at his pork pie.

They ate in silence in the dark, using their phones as torches, the moon a bright half overhead. Martin stared it for a while, trying to push down his anxiety. As he looked back down to earth he caught Sasha's eyes. She was staring right at him, eyes shining in the light of the moon and torches, strangely vacant. She stared directly at him until he looked away. He noticed that her arms were bare and pebbled with goose bumps, though she seemed not to care.

At a few minutes close to midnight Melanie's head snapped up. Martin would never say it to her face, but she looked a little like a hound catching the scent of a fox.

'It's time,' she said. 'Or, nearly. I can feel it - _pushing_ through.'

As though on cue Martin heard a ripping sound, the buzz of electricity, as though the air itself were tearing apart. And there, in the shadows of the trees near the edge of the punchbowl, stood a tall, slim figure clutching its arms close to its body and shivering violently.

'Jon?' Martin said, softly, already scrambling to his feet and running over. The other said nothing, or maybe he blocked them out, but it didn't take Martin long to reach the figure. It was Jon - his pale, thin, angular face was distinct in the sharp light from the half-moon.

'Hello?' Jon said, faintly, eyes vague and unseeing.

Martin ignored him and crashed right into him, knocking them both to the ground but turning as they fell. Already his arms were clutching Jon tight enough to feel his ribs, his bones through his skin. The ground beneath Martin’s back was hard and cold, prickly with dead leaves and rocks, but Jon’s body was warm and alive and draped across his front, and Martin couldn’t quite believe they’d made it that far.

'I've got you,' Martin said, muffled, into Jon's hair. 

Jon said nothing. 

'Now just hold on,' Tim said from somewhere behind Martin, making him jump.

'I know,' Martin said, a little snappily. Now, with Jon's thin body breathing in his arms, fragile as a bird, Martin felt the panic rise sharply in his throat. What would happen if he let go? Would Jon fade away, like morning mist burnt away by the sun? Would he abruptly vanish, gone forever? Or would he last long enough to look at Martin and know of his failure?

Martin held on a little tighter.

'You've got about five hours ‘til sunrise,' Melanie said, from his other side. 'You're lucky we did this so late in the spring.'

'Doesn't feel like spring,' Tim grumbled. 'It snowed last week.'

'Global warming,' Martin said, half-laughing, into Jon's hair. 'It's a bitch.'

**

For two hours, there was peace. Then three, then four, and Martin felt lulled into a dangerous false sense of security. Jon remained very much Jon-shaped in his arms, and though he seemed unaware of his surroundings, he otherwise lay there, docile and still, even as the others talked around him.

Then it hit.

There was no warning. No prior movement, or sound, or anything.

Just one second Martin was holding tightly to Jon, and the next there was a tiger in his arms, pushing at him with strong paws and sharp claws.

'Oh _shit_.'

Martin heard Tim swear from somewhere behind him, but he was too busy trying to keep his arms locked around the tiger's stomach to bother saying anything himself. The tiger fought and bit and scratched, drawing slashing arcs across Martin's skin, but Martin held on doggedly.

The tiger fell still, and it was Jon again. To his relief, as the illusion faded, so did the wounds it caused, and the blood dripping into his eyes vanished.

'Oh thank _christ_ ,' Tim said, kneeling down next to Martin and peering closely at his face, where the scratches and slashes had healed instantly. 'I thought you were done for.'

'Not done for quite yet,' Martin said, tightening his arms once more. 'I'd get further back, if I were you.'

Tim didn't need much more provocation to scramble backwards. Jon's body changed shape again, as suddenly as it had done before, to make a giant python writhing and squirming and curling strong around his body, and Martin held on.

After a while, he realised it was easier just to shut his eyes. The illusions seemed less shocking, less vivid, when his eyes were shut - the pain they brought vanished when they did, and so Martin just hung on like a stubborn barnacle. Time passed. He held on.

**

There were birds beginning to sing, waking up just before the dawn. Night was almost over. He was so nearly there.

The body in his arms, no longer recognisably human, writhed and thrashed wildly as it continued to scream that high, unearthly sound. Martin gritted his teeth through the pain in his head and pressed his eyes tightly shut as it screamed on and on.

And then it fell silent. Light grew, turning his eyelids orange-red. Was the sun rising? Was the night over? The body was still now, no longer fighting against Martin’s grip.

Martin cracked open his eyes but didn’t let go.

What he’d thought was the sun reaching over the horizon was actually the body itself, glowing with some strange, internal heat. The skin was bright red turning orange turning yellow turning white hot, and the heat was causing his own skin to burn up and blister where he was touching it.

Martin fought the instinct to let go and held on harder. His arms and chest seared with pain but he hissed it out through his teeth and kept on holding the body close to his.

‘It’s in my mind,’ he whispered, rocking slightly on his legs. ‘It’s all in my mind.’

He’d never been good with heat – and now he knew it was because of his selkie nature. Fire was anathema to him – the cool, dark sea was where he was meant to be, and holding a living brand tight to his chest was the very opposite of what he should be doing. 

The pain grew to a crescendo as he felt his skin melt and fuse with his clothes, with the body in his arms, and finally he let out a scream…

But he didn’t let go.

The pain and the heat vanished all at once, as the first rays of dawn peeked through the leaves. The burns on his bare arms vanished, leaving his skin unmarred and whole. The smell of melting flesh dissipated.

It was over.

Martin looked down at the body he was cradling, and it was Jon again.

He could have wept with joy.

‘Jon,’ he said, gently tapping his face, trying to wake him. ‘Jon, you’re out. You’re _safe_.’

Jon did not open his eyes. His skin was pale – his head lolled at an unnatural angle. His body was cold and still.

Martin was clutching a dead body.

‘No,’ he said, quietly. After all the pain and the suffering and the sleepless night of terror, Martin finally felt defeated. Hot salty tears started to stream down his cheeks as he stared down at Jon’s quiet, pale face.

What had he done wrong? Had he let go? 

Had he lost Jon forever?

Through his dazed confusion, he could faintly hear shouting.

It sounded like Tim and Melanie.

‘… coat!’ The words were muffled, but Martin concentrated on them.

‘…in your coat, Martin! Your coat!’

The words finally registered, and Martin sprang into action. His anorak, draped over a rock from earlier, was out of reach - he'd have to let go of Jon to grab it, and right now that was out of the question. Releasing one arm, he reached over to his bag instead and, with difficulty, pulled out his sealskin. Then, while carefully keeping hold of Jon’s body, Martin wrapped him in the skin and held him tight again.

‘Come on,’ he said, tucking Jon’s head into his neck and closing his own eyes. ‘Come on.’

Jon exhaled quietly into Martin’s neck, and then pulled back.

‘Martin?’ he said, his eyes vague. ‘Is that you?’

'Yeah,' Martin said, barely holding in a sob of relief. 'It's me. We're here.'

'Oh, thank god,' Melanie sighed loudly, from somewhere behind him. 

'You stupid, _stupid_ fucking idiot,' Tim said, roughly, from close-by.

Jon, his eyes still closed, let out a weary laugh.

'Is that Tim?' he asked. ‘And Melanie?’

'Who else?'

Jon sighed.

'Thank you,' he said, softly. 'I don't... I didn't deserve...'

'Shut up,' Martin said, as gently as possible. 'Just - relax, ok? It's over.'

The ring on Martin's finger, which had been burning hot the night through, was slowly cooling in the dawn light. The golden rays shone off the greys in Jon's hair - Martin was pretty sure there were a few more greys than there had been before.

'We did it,' Tim said, as though it were finally dawning on him. 'We made it. We _did_ it.'

'Technically, Martin did it,' Melanie said, but Tim was too busy whooping to care. Martin laughed as he watched Tim jump up and down, grabbing Melanie's shoulders and making her do the same. Joy rose unconfined in his chest.

'I might pass out now,' Jon whispered, softly. 

Martin examined Jon's face closely. He did look awful - he'd been away for almost four days, and he looked like he hadn't slept the whole time. His skin was paper-white, his cheeks gaunter than usual, and the bags under his eyes were dark and puffy.

He was the best thing Martin had ever seen.

'Ok,' Martin said, leaning down to buss a kiss against Jon's furrowed brow. 'We'll be here when you wake up.'

Jon’s eyes slid shut.

**

Coda

It was an idyllic British summer day.

Jon lounged on the canvas camping chair and squinted out at the sparkling waves. The sea was calm, with gentle waves sweeping up and down the sandy beach like long, slow caresses. Seagulls wheeled in the clear blue sky. 

It was peaceful for a brief moment. 

Along with the screeching of the gulls, laughter and chatter floated past on the breeze. Jon squinted out at the horizon when the sounds grew louder to see two shapes emerging from the waves. He watched them walk closer, two polar opposites – one slim and willowy with golden hair glinting in the light, the other big and strong and stocky with hair dark as an oil slick.

Martin threw himself down onto the blanket when they reached him, tossing his sodden skin over Jon's knees.

'Martin!' he protested, feeling the water seep through his shorts.

'What? It needs to dry out,' he said, smiling up at Jon, the sunlight making him squint.

Jon made a point of draping it over the windbreaker, frowning down at the wet patches on his shorts.

'You should have come in the water,' Tim said, already lying down to sunbathe, sunglasses on and hair artfully tousled by the salt water and sea breeze.

'It's cold for us normal people,' Jon pointed out. 'Right, Melanie?'

'Hmm?' Melanie didn't look up from her phone.

'Who you messaging? All your friends are here,' Tim said, flopping over to lie beside her and shaking his head like a dog.

'Urgh,' Melanie said, flinching from the spray. 'Jesus, Tim.' 

'Sasha still MIA?' Tim asked.

Melanie looked up but said nothing.

They'd invited Sasha along for the beach trip, but she'd made vague noises about already having plans for the bank holiday weekend and told them all to have a good time without her. It had hit Melanie hardest.

'She's not replying to my messages either,' Tim said. 'Hasn't for months.'

Jon looked down at his hands. He'd heard Martin's side of the story of what he'd faced on the shore of Tir Na N'Og, but the others hadn't been as willing to share. And Sasha had been distant since he'd been rescued.

He couldn't help but think it was his fault. If he'd never followed Michael, then the others would never have followed him into danger...

A cold, damp hand curled into his own, and he looked down into Martin's knowing face. Jon tried for a smile, and squeezed his hand.

Sometimes Martin was too perceptive for his own good.

'You still should have come in,' Martin said, in a transparent attempt to redirect the conversation. 'It was _lovely_.'

'Maybe for you,' Melanie sniffed. 'Some of us like being able to feel our extremities.' She glanced up at the sea but was almost instantly back on her phone.

'You can always come and warm up in the sun afterwards,' Tim said, stretching on his towel with a practically indecent moan. Martin blushed deeply, and Jon was amused to see that the splotchy redness spread almost all the way down his chest.

'Maybe later,' Melanie said, noncommittal.

Martin's hand was already warming in Jon's, his human skin running hot as usual. The sealskin, laid out in the sun on the windbreaker, steamed gently in the direct sunlight.

'I'm knackered, anyway,' Martin said, leaning fully against Jon's legs, his damp hair against Jon's knee.

‘I’m alright, but thank you,’ Jon said, smiling, using his free hand to tousle Martin’s wet hair.

Later, when Tim had dragged Melanie down to paddle in the surf, Jon joined Martin on the blanket. They lay close together, hands entwined.

Jon was grateful that, after their daring rescue, he had taken Martin up on his drink offer.

‘You’re thinking hard over there,’ Martin mumbled, eyes drooping. 

‘Sorry if it’s keeping you up,’ Jon grinned.

Martin shoved his shoulder half-heartedly. 

‘Changing is tiring,’ he said. ‘I’m still… getting used to it.’

‘It suits you,’ Jon said, honestly. Martin had always seemed so out of place in the Institute, in his perpetual shorts and t shirts. Emerging from the water, dark hair slicked back, his warm skin pebbled with salt water, he looked natural. Like he belonged.

Between their bodies their hands were curled together, and Martin ran his thumb over Jon’s knuckles affectionately.

‘You’re not wearing your ring?’ he asked, yawning.

‘Oh, no,’ Jon said. ‘Not… not for the beach.’

That seemed to satisfy Martin – he smiled and yawned widely, before tilting his head up towards the sun and closing his eyes.

Jon felt a little guilty about the lie. He didn’t wear his grandmother’s ring very much anymore – he had done, initially, after his return from Tir Na N’Og. But it had been a bit itchy – the skin of his finger and gone red and sore, and so he took it off more and more.

Thinking of Tir Na N’Og made Jon’s skin tingle, made his throat fizz like he’d tipped sherbet into his mouth. 

‘You ok?’ Martin asked, one eye cracked open. Jon realised that he was faintly shivering.

‘It’s a brisk wind,’ he said, curling into Martin’s warmth.

‘Don’t worry,’ Martin said. ‘I won’t let Tim throw you in the sea too.’

As he spoke, shrieks and splashing sounded from the waterline, followed by Melanie’s voice swearing up a blue streak.

‘Thank you,’ Jon said. He relaxed a little more, pushing all thoughts of fairyland away. He was content here, in the real world. He had no need for anything else.

And if he thought that enough, maybe it would eventually become true.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick thanks to the brilliant mods of tmabigbang18. It was excellent fun and so well run!


End file.
